Hi I bought XP Pro bout a month ago and it was a clean install I chose FAT 32 for my HD. About 2 weeks ltr I converted to NTFS, now Ive been told doing it this way makes my computer run slower than it was originally with the FAT 32. Im really not wanting to reformat and install again is it really gonna be noticably faster if I do a clean install and choose NTFS?? THNX!!

It shouldn't make any difference. I haven't noticed any difference myself.

Although, it is possible that if the drive was close to being full in FAT32, and then you convert to NTFS, there could be a slowdown, but only because of fragmentation.

It really shouldn't be much of an issue though.

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him...a super-callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

Is the computer really running slower, or have you just been told that NTFS slows it down?

NTFS should not be any slower than FAT32 provided you have enough RAM in the machine (at least 256MB).

Rather than reinstalling, I suggest you do the following...

1) Increase RAM to at least 256MB. 2) Uninstall any unneeded programs. 3) Run virus and spyware scans, and remove any nasties. 4) Defragment your hard disk. 5) Make sure you are using the bus-mastering IDE driver for your hard drive (unless of course it is a SCSI device).

NTFS can have a negative effect on older slow computers it certainly did on my old P-II 450 even though I had over 256 MB of ram, the reason for this is several factors like indexing service if you're running file encryption and various other features of NTFS but on newer systems this really shouldn't be an issue.

For those of you who know your job is to teach.
For those of you who dont know your job is to learn.

More over, NTFS has a great number of features that FAT32 lacks. Because of NTFS's inbuilt allocation system, cluster sizes are smaller.. this means less slack.. which means you lose less disk space to just waste.

If you are running a single partition greater then 60G, of course, NTFS becomes basically the only viable choice. More then that, due to the security and stability of NTFS as a method vs. FAT32, it's a better choice from the beginning regardless.